Double standards confuse me…

I came across a post a while back that I was reminded of earlier today, that discussed various different trackers or alarms to alert people when people with autism or alzheimer’s or general dementia were at risk of wandering. The post itself was not what interested me the most – rather the comments in response to it were.

Most of the comments immediately jumped onto the idea that these gadgets would be misused by abusers, that people (particularly autistic people) who wander are usually trying to get away from abusive situations, that these gadgets were terrible and anyone who put one on their relative was a monster.

Right – so the response were an over-exaggeration absolutely but you can see the potential amongst a small group of people to abuse a gadget such as this.

My issue came with the fact that I had previously seen the same commenters defend Facilitated Communication as a completely valid means of communication that should be accepted – quoting ASAN’s “assuming competency” stance on the area of Facilitated Communication.

Yes that’s right – they were outraged by the existence of a gadget designed to prevent wandering which (as far as I can find – send me any news stories if you know any) has not been associated with any allegations of abuse, but are positively advocating for a disproven method of communication that not only has no empirical evidence going for it, and has been shown time and time again to almost always be the prompter doing the communicating (most studies come back with 100% rates for this), but has also been linked to false allegations of abuse, justifications for sexually abusing autistic people, and the murder of at least one child.

It’s good to be critical and think logically about the potentials for abuse – but to dismiss one thing simply for having the potential to be abusive and being completely accepting of another thing that has been proven to be abusive isn’t just hypocritical – it’s ridiculous.